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A CHILD'S 
RECOLLECTIONS 

OF 

TENNYSON 



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FARRINGFORD 



A CHILD'S 
RECOLLECTIONS 

OF 

TENNYSON 

BY 

EDITH NIGHOLL ELLISON 



NEW YORK 
E. P. BUTTON AND COMPANY 

31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 
1906 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Two CoDies Received 

JUN 80 1906 

Oopyright Entry 




.£4 



Copyright, 1906 
Bj E. P. DuTTON & Company 

Published, September, 1906 



THE UNIVERSITY PEESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 



To My Sister 
MARGARET L. WOODS 

D 

We twa hae rua about the braes, 

And pu'd the gowaas fine ; 
But we 've wandered mony a weary foot 
Sin' auld lang syne. 

For auld lang sync, my dear, 

For auld lang syne, 
We '11 tak' a cup o' kindness yet, 
For auld lang syne. 

We twa hae paidllt i' the burn 

Frae mornin' sun till dine ; 
But seas between us braid hae roared 
Sin' auld lang syne. 

For auld lang syne, my dear. 

For auld lang syne. 
We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet. 
For auld lang syne 1 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Farringford Frontispiece 

Mrs. Tennyson Facing page 20 

Tennyson at Farringford. About 

1866 " " 32 

Hallam. Aged 12. By Watts ** ** 42 

Lane, Farringford *' '* 5o 

Tennyson at Farringford. About 

1870 " "100 

Lionel. As a Cambridge Under- 
graduate " " io4 

Lionel. Aged 10. By Watts . '* " 106 

Tennyson and his Nurse ... '* ♦' no 



A CHILD S RECOLLECTIONS 

OF 

TENNYSON 

Chapter I 

IT all began in the Isle of Wight, 
far back in the days of the Crimean 
War ; and it is true from beginning 
to end. 

The little girl of the story was 
only three years old ; in fact, she 
was celebrating her third birthday, 
so, of course, the first part of the 
story comes out of her mother's 
diary. 

Her mother was helping her to 
celebrate, and so was her elder 
brother — a beautiful five-year-old 
in a holland blouse. The picture 
of both children, as they looked 
then, still hangs in their mother's 



2 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

room. On that August day in the 
far past, as in the picture, the little 
girl's fair curls were snooded with 
a blue ribbon and crowned with 
a wreath of blue speedwells and 
forget-me-nots ; for the mother was 
young, and thought the flowers and 
ribbon matched the little girl's eyes 
then. The child also wore a blue 
frock and a pinafore of fine white 
lawn. All this is in the mother's 
diary, of course. 

The birthday feast was spread on 
the top of a low haystack in the 
barnyard of the farmhouse in which 
the children and their parents were 
spending the summer . There was a 
birthday cake and other good things, 
— ' ' Isle of Wight doughnuts, " and 
*' Isle of Wight junket." No one 
in the world has tasted junket as 



OF TENNYSON 



these island people make it ; I mean, 
no one in the big world outside, 
across the seas. It is a glorified 
clabber, covered an inch deep with 
thick yellow cream and scattered 
with " Hundreds and Thousands. " 
Those delightful little red and blue 
pellets, so tiny that you cannot count 
them, do not grow on this side of 
the ocean, but on the other side they 
were one of the sweet enchantments 
of the children of the Long Ago. 

The snowy tablecloth was strewn 
with wild flowers because the feast 
took place in the Island of Flowers. 
A blue awning protected the heads of 
the revelers from the old-fashioned 
August sun ; for even the English 
sun was hot in those blessed days. 
And beyond the green of the rabbit- 
warren and the rushgrown common 



4 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

they could see the roUing downs 
and the white cHffs and the blue 
and shining sea. 

There was only one drawback 
to the children's enjoyment, and 
that was a flock of geese that 
jabbered and stretched their long 
necks. The children did not like 
geese. They had run away from 
them, hand in hand, too often — 
running for their lives, as they 
really believed in those days. 
However, their mother was with 
them this time ; and after all, 
though the neck of a goose is terri- 
bly long, it cannot quite reach to 
the top of a stack. 

Suddenly there appeared in the 
barnyard a tall man with flowing 
black hair. He wore a black 
Spanish sombrero and a blue cloak 



OF TENNYSON 



With a velvet collar. His eyes 
were certainly of the near-sighted 
kind, but they were dark and 
bright, and his clean-shaven mouth 
was curved with a smile. 

The mother of the children had 
never seen the poet before, although 
their father had met him ; however, 
she recognized Alfred Tennyson at 
once. 

"Pray, who are you?" asked a 
gruif but not unattractive voice. 
' ' And how did you get up there ? " 

*' I am Granville Bradley's wife, 
and these are our children. We 
climbed up here, and we are having 
a feast because it is our little girl's 
birthday." 

He laughed and cried, 

' ' Hold up the child that I may 
see her! " 



6 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

The proud young mother obeyed, 
and then he stretched out his arms 
exclaiming, 

* ' Drop her down ! Don't be 
afraid ! Mrs. Tennyson and the 
babies are in the carriage. She 
can't get out, so come down and 
see her." 

So the Httle girl was dropped 
into the poet's arms. 

*' Little maid, how old are you 
to-day? " he said. 

" Thwee 1 " quoth she. 

• * Then you and I have a birth- 
day between us. I am forty-five 
to-day, and you are three. Per- 
haps when you are a woman and I 
am an old man you will remember 
that we had one birthday once.'* 

Meantime the mother had slipped 
down the other side of the stack 



OF TEINNYSON 



with Wa-Wa, as the Kttle boy was 
sometimes called, and walking to 
the yard gate she found a carriage 
there, in which was seated a lovely 
lady. Her large dark eyes beamed 
a kind welcome, and she was fair- 
skinned and dressed all in white. 
With her were two boys, one a 
baby on his nurse's lap. 

After awhile the poet said, 

"Now, Emily, you have talked 
enough I Come, Hallam, take the 
little girl's hand, and walk together 1 
We will go in the house and see if 
we cannot find her father." 

And just then the father came 
out to greet the visitors. 

Hallam Tennyson was a striking 
child, with long fair curls and 
solemn brown eyes ; a grave, self- 
possessed boy, looking like a pic- 



8 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

ture in his velvet blouse and wide 
lace collar. 

He took the little girl's hand, and 
said in a low, slow voice, 

' ' How old are jou ? " 

" Thwee. This is mj birth- 
day." 

' ' Then we all have birthdays 
together," replied the little boy. 
"I'm thwee in four days." 

Then the poet went into the small 
parlor, and seeing the table littered 
with books, took up a volume of 
his own poems which was amongst 
them. It was "Maud," pub- 
lished only a short time before. 
He talked about the poem, which 
when it was first published was a 
good deal disliked ; it was not 
until later that it became so pop- 
ular. He always begged his friends 



OF TENNYSON 



* * never to hear his pet bantUng 
abused without defending her," 
and as the father of the children 
admired "Maud* greatly, he was 
ever ready to do so. Some time 
after this when Lear, the artist and 
musician — known to children as 
the author of the fascinating ' ' Book 
of Nonsense " — was at Farringford, 
he went to the piano and began 
inventing a musical setting to 
"Maud," singing the words as he 
went along. Mr. Tennyson was 
charmed, and marched up and 
down the room, occasionally add- 
ing his own voice to that of the 
singer, and exclaiming, " Lear, 
you have revealed more of my 
Maud to myself! " But afterward, 
when a lady tried to improve on 
Lear's work in setting it down in 



lo A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

black and white, the poet did not 
like the music any more. 

Mr. Tennyson and the children's 
father talked and talked in the little 
parlor of the farmhouse that August 
day, and still could not finish what 
they had to say; so at last the father 
walked all the way home with the 
poet over Beacon Down. And this 
was the first of many, many such 
walks to come, and the beginning 
of a friendship which endured till 
death. 

It was at this time, although the 
letter is not dated, that the father 
of the children wrote to his wife's 
brother* as follows : 

Dear William: We leave this 
delightful place to-morrow. We've 
been here a short fortnight: so glori- 

1 The Rev. William B. Philpot. 



OF TEINNYSON 



ous I Freshwater parish is a triangle 
at the end of the Island, with its base 
on a little stream that runs into Yar- 
mouth Estuary, and its apex the 
Needles. The whole of its south side 
is a grand chalk down, with cliffs 600 
feet high, ending in the Needles, and 
vicAvs that quite craze one. The rest 
is very broken and interesting ground. 
We are just at the east end, a short 
mile from the Needles in Alum Bay, 
at the foot of the downs just off the 
chalk on a strip of marine Eocene 
Tertiary that runs through the Island, 
with a fine hill opposite us called 
Headon Hill, overrun by rabbits, 
and famous geologically. We are, in 
fact, living at The Warren, in a 
primitive little farmhouse, three 
miles from church and seven from 
the butcher's ; a few minutes take us 
up the down, a few the other way 
to the sea far below us. I leave it 
[here come some Greek words which 



12 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

mean sorrowing at heart]. More- 
over, I've seen a great deal of Tenny- 
son. I made bold to call: found him 
at dinner : so left my card with a 
line of apology and an appeal to the 
name of Franklin Lushington. A 
genial note next day, and an invite 
to meet Lear, the artist. Two days 
after another dinner — five o'clock, 
with long evenings — and since then 
sundry talks, culminating in a whole 
day yesterday spent tete-a-tete with 
him, except just at dinner, etc. We 
walked early to see the Wealden 
strata five miles off, and spent all 
the day walking and sitting. I found 
I could talk to him as to an old 
friend on all subjects, high and low, 
and I believe that even if he had 
never written a line I should think 
him one of the finest of the genus 
human am. 

I wish I could see you, my dear 
fellow, to talk it all over. He 



OF TENNYSON i3 

explained to me sundry cruces in 
"Maud," and read or chanted me a 
good deal of it. Don't you form an 
opinion about it until you've read it 
over and over. We talked a great 
deal on religious questions. A grand 
fellow, sir I I implored him to come 
to Rugby, 1 but that is not likely. 
However, please God, we return here 
next year, and for a longer time. 
His house is two miles off, and he 
walked back with me towards mid- 
night, so I am still under the spell 
of a great man. 

I 've read right through the Odys- 
sey here : but not much else, except 
Jowett's Essays and some geology — 
you see how it has entered into the 
Tennysonian brain. . . . The last 
three nights I 've excited myself talk- 
ing to the poet over much — but J 've 
had little enough of that in this place. 

1 The children's father was then a master at 
Rugby School. 



1 4 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

We get to Rugby early on Friday. 
We hope to sleep in Oxford to- 
morrow : it 's rather a long journey 
with wife, brats, and three young 
Forest ponies. 

Best love to you both from both. 
Brother, 

G. G. Bradley.i 

And now the story of the little 
girl's birthday is all told. More 
birthdays were celebrated in the 
Isle of Wight, and sisters came 
into the world to spend it with 
her ; but this third birthday was 
the most important of all. 



1 The above letter is in the possession of H. S. 
Philpot, son of the recipient. 



OF TENNYSON 



Chapter II 

iNOT so very long after this our 
father built himself a country 
home on that green little island in 
the English Channel. Of course 
England is an island too, but 
somehow we never thought of 
that, as it seemed to us a huge 
and boundless land ; and when we 
sat upon the deck of the Solent 
steamer, anxiously watching our 
favorite ponies trailing behind us 
in a flat-bottomed boat and rolling 
about in the foamy waves our 
steamer churned up, we always 
felt as if we were making quite 
an adventurous voyage. 

On the English side of the 
Solent is the famous New Forest, 
of which everyone had read and 



1 6 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

heard so much ; but I do not 
think many persons are acquainted 
with the New Forest ponies — the 
prettiest and most spirited breed 
of ponies in the world, my father 
thought. He never would own 
any other breed. They are shaped 
like small horses, with clean, fine 
limbs, small, lean heads, which 
they carry high, and are in every 
way superior to the rougher, 
coarser breeds of ponies. The 
silver-mounted hoof of one partic- 
ularly wicked little black beauty, 
who made many a trip back and 
forth across the Solent, stands on 
my table now. My father believed 
that the wickeder the ponies we 
rode as children, the better horse- 
women we should become ; and 
perhaps he was right. Anyhow, 



OF TENNYSON 17 

SO long as we were children the 
ponies were never left behind, 
when, every summer and winter, 
we went for a few weeks to the 
Isle of Wight. 

Very often, on the pier at Yar- 
mouth, we would see, long before 
our steamer was made fast to it, 
certain black specks, which even at 
a great distance we knew to be the 
Tennyson family, come down to 
meet us, Mr. Tennyson always in 
his Spanish cloak and sombrero. 
For they were near neighbors of 
ours at Freshwater, which then 
was nothing but a straggling 
village. Beautiful Farringford, the 
poet's island home, was within 
easy walking distance, and my 
sister and I and his two boys were 
constantly together. The happiest 



1 8 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

hours of my childhood were passed 
in that rambhiig, romantic, old 
gray pile, or beneath the spread- 
ing cedars and ilexes of its mossy 
lawns, or playing imaginative games 
through its woodland mazes or 
along its broad meadows. We 
were only children, yet the charm 
of that big house lay in its mys- 
terious promise of something — we 
knew not what; and now, more 
than ever, my sister writes me, 
it resembles the Palace of the 
Sleeping Beauty in the woods. 
A house that had a secret pas- 
sage, too 1 But we will tell about 
that later. There were odd, sweet, 
faint odors in those quaint rooms 
— odors that appealed to the 
imagination in some wonderful, 
quite unexplainable way. We 



OF TENNYSON 



wondered if the grown-ups felt as 
we did. 

Before me lies a picture of that 
lovely home. Once more my sister 
and I are running down the leafy 
lane, hurrying to Farringford, for 
a long afternoon and evening play 
with the boys. There is the low 
green gate in the wall — the pos- 
tern gate of old romance — which 
lets us in to fairyland. Wide it 
flies, and in a moment we, too, 
are flying along the pebbly paths 
that wind through close-growing 
trees down to the dear old house, 
nestling, with its mullioned win- 
dows and ivy clad gables, like — 
well, just like a bird in a warm 
nest. In the picture you can see 
the side door through which the 
boys used to come bounding to 



20 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

meet us — not noisily, though. 
Noise reigned rampant only in the 
upper story of the rambling house 
or in the wide grounds, in sunlit 
nooks of which stray flowers 
bloomed in the balmy winters of 
the Isle of Wight. The boys never 
forgot that their mother was an 
invalid, and love and considera- 
tion for her came always first with 
them . 

If the afternoon chanced to be 
damp and gloomy, then we would 
all four slip swiftly in at the side 
door, through the boys' study — 
where they studied every morning 
with a tutor — across the anteroom 
connected with the big drawing- 
room, from this to the hall beyond, 
and then with a concerted noiseless 
rush up the stairs, to turn loose the 




MRS. TENNYSON 



OF TENNYSON 21 

spirit of fun in the endless mazes 
of that upper floor. 

Such a house as that was for 
**I Spy 1 " and other thrilling 
games ! All nooks and corners 
and queer little gable rooms and 
great big ones leading one out of 
the other — you never could tell 
when or where you were safe I 
The enemy came bouncing out j ust 
when you least expected him, and 
then what a breathless chase there 
was up and down steps and around 
sharp corners ! 

These games never disturbed the 
calm of the elders below — not even 
the poet in his far-off study. The 
walls were too heavy, and winding 
passages, too, did much to shut out 
the noise. But on one never-to- 
be-forgotten afternoon, at an hour 



22 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIO^S 

chosen by Mr. Tennyson for his 
walk, I found an ideal hiding-place 
— under the steps leading down 
from his bedroom to his dressing- 
room. Triumphant and secure I 
crouched, listening to the footsteps 
and cries of my playfellows, now 
near, now far, but ever at fault. 
Suddenly a gruff voice shouted, 
"I spy! " and the great figure, 
which had stooped to peer at me, 
wheeled and started to run — then 
unexpectedly whirled again, and 
catching me up in his arms, the 
poet pretended to smother me in 
the folds of his huge cloak, roaring 
like a bear. At that time I was 
too old to be scared, but I certainly 
was startled at the results of my 
own audacity, and he was gone be- 
fore I had breath to utter a word. 



OF TENNYSON 28 

Then there was the warm and 
pleasant nursery, opening into the 
large corridor, in both of which we 
freely played. The boys possessed 
what seemed to us the most fasci- 
nating collection of books and toys ; 
and a specially entrancing box of 
lead soldiers furnished our varied 
imaginations with sport for hours. 
When we finally tired of these, we 
would go downstairs to the stone- 
floored hall, near whose massive 
front door stood the light of our 
eyes — the Farringford rocking- 
horse. To swing forever if we so 
desired with this glorious steed, 
two on his sorrel back and one in 
each of the seats at the ends of his 
rockers, weaving imaginary tales 
and singing long, low songs, all 
together, had a peculiar fascination 



2^ A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

for our youthful minds. Years and 
years later my sister, on a visit to 
Farringford, wrote me that she had 
been watching the poet's grandsons 
rocking on the same beloved horse, 
and she wondered whether those 
small boys loved him just in the 
same way we did. 

As we four grew older our games 
became more and more games with- 
out toys. They were endless story- 
plays, filled with adventure and 
romance. We played a good deal 
in pairs, too ; for sometimes Lionel, 
who was very high-spirited, would 
rebel at the parts given him by his 
brother in the performance, and he 
and my sister would run off by 
themselves. But the quartette was 
seldom broken for more than a very 
short time, the rebels soon return- 



OF TENNYSON 26 

irig to their allegiance. I never 
remember a quarrel between the 
brothers. They were devoted to 
each other, and to their parents and 
home; and if Lionel was spirited, 
Hallam was always patient and tact- 
ful. And if, as we grew older, our 
games became somewhat fanciful 
and romantic, there was not a 
trace of silly sentimentality either 
in ourselves or our play ; we were 
still children, absolutely childlike 
whether in fun or in earnest. 

Perhaps it was the effect of the 
mysterious old house that kept our 
imaginations ever on the alert. 
Certain it was that our rapture 
knew no bounds when Lionel said 
one day, 

* ' Did you know that there is a 
secret passage in one of these walls ? 



26 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

It leads out into the grounds, be- 
hind the drawing-room." 

We were all in the dim, picture- 
hung lower hall, and immediately 
there were low, excited cries of 
**No — not really?" "How do 
we get in ? " ' * Let 's try now ! " 

One of the boys ran for a candle, 
and with much mystery and with 
very solemn faces we took down 
the picture behind which the secret 
passage was said to be. Sure 
enough, there was a really, truly 
door I 

We opened it, and in we all 
went, the leader bearing the lighted 
candle. We might have set the 
old house on fire, but of course 
we never thought of anything so 
commonplace. It was dark in 
there, and musty and dusty too. 



OF TENNYSOW 27 



That was a serious little procession 
stumbling slowly along inside the 
thick wall. Every step seemed to 
be leading us further away — back 
into the dark ages, when England 
was forever quarrelling with herself 
and real men fled for their lives 
along this narrow path to light and 
liberty — further away from our 
everyday lives, with its lessons and 
clean aprons and other tiresome 
things . 

But alas I our trembling joy 
was shortlived. 

"It's no use!'* exclaimed our 
leader in hollow accents. "We 
can't get any further! The pas- 
sage is choked with rubbish ; yet 
I know it leads into a little room 
behind the drawing-room fireplace 
and then out upon the lawn. I 



28 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

have heard my father tell about 
it." 

In vain we prodded and poked. 
The dust of ages was too much for 
us, and sorrowfully we backed out 
Into ordinary life again. 

Of the evenings at Farringford 
very much has been written by 
grown-ups of and for grown-ups, 
but no one has told the children's 
side of these evenings. When Mr. 
and Mrs. Tennyson were alone, or 
had only intimate friends — such 
as our parents — or one or two 
distinguished guests, to dine with 
them, the meal was served in the 
anteroom. Dessert, consisting of 
fruit, wine, and a particular kind 
of sweet biscuit which we children 
believed could not possibly be made 
anywhere but in the Farringford 



OF TENNYSON 29 



kitchen, was served in llie draw- 
ing-room, on a table drawn close 
to Mrs. Tennyson's sofa beside 
the big fireplace. The wide win- 
dow, looking out on the giant 
cedar and the lawn, was curtained 
— well I remember how the boys, 
who loved pets of all kinds, kept 
a tame toad in that window ! — 
and the large room was cosy 
with fire and lamp light. As soon 
as dessert was ready a summons 
was sent upstairs to the distant 
nursery : 

" Send the children down I " 
And then what a combing of 
curls (very sadly tangled) and 
straightening out of frocks and 
tunics set in ! Two girls and two 
boys, all Avith long hair and sashes 
to be tied, and only one nurse to 



3o A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

attend to them all ! And one boy 
full of pranks and mischief! 

*' It's just his fun ! " laughed the 
long-suffering nurse, whilst she 
struggled with Lionel's mass of 
red-gold curls, he, overbrimming 
with merriment, hindering her 
patient labors. 

At last we were ready, and down 
we trooped, led by Hallam, whose 
duty it was to serve the dessert — 
a loving duty, performed gently, 
and with that simplicity and absence 
of affectation, that straightforward 
courtesy, which characterized both 
boys. Of this simple frankness a 
great man once said he did not 
know whether they had inherited 
or been taught it. 

Even children notice harmonious 
effects, and to this day I can see 



OF TENNYSON 3i 

that Farringford drawing-room as 
it looked then : The soft browns 
and crimsons touched here and 
there by the glow of fire and 
candles — for, if my memory is 
correct, it was candles that were 
used ; the lady on the sofa, who 
must never be disturbed by raised 
voices or noisy steps, robed always 
in a trailing gown of dove-color, 
her dark hair crowned with a tri- 
angular piece of old lace hanging 
in lappets on either side of her 
clear-cut, highbred face, and whose 
low-toned call of " Allie ! " never 
failed to attract the attention of the 
bearded poet, sitting smoking in a 
chair not far removed from her 
sofa. Then the guests, in those 
early days more remarkable for 
quality than quantity, as Mr. 



33 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

Tennyson in later years, after his 
sons were grown, became less of a 
recluse; but quality they certainly 
possessed, these guests. Scarcely 
one but had something to say 
worth hearing or was in some way 
worthy of notice ; yet, as I remem- 
ber those evenings, it was mostly 
the poet who talked in a deep, 
growling voice, his guests occa- 
sionally joining in, all very sub- 
dued and quiet as they seemed to 
us, who sat still as mice (though 
the mice / have met never were as 
still as we were) on our chairs in 
that great hushed room, eating 
cakes and fruit. Now and then 
the poet was what we irreverent 
little girls called grumpy, and just 
sat silent, pulling at his beloved 
pipe. Last, but to us not least, 




TENNYSON AT FAHRINGFOllD 

About 1800 



OF TENNYSON 33 

the two boys. Straight and tall, 
dressed always in tunics and knee- 
pants of the same shade of gray as 
their mother's gown — belted on 
week-days, crimson sashed and 
crimson stockinged on Sundays, 
holidays, and everyday evenings ; 
low, strapped slippers always worn 
in the house ; and on their broad , lace 
collars their long golden hair falling, 
Lionel's curls forever in his eyes. 
They were both fine boys, but the 
younger's beauty was so great that 
even we children were conscious of 
it. He looked like his mother, 
whereas the elder had his father's 
deep-set eyes and high forehead. 
They were attired as the sons of ar- 
tists or poets, and matched the old 
house as well as their faces in those 
days matched their quaint attire. 



34 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

Before very long we children 
would slip out and gather around 
the red coals of the anteroom fire. 
There we told, in thrilling whis- 
pers, hair-raising tales of ghosts 
and banshees and all kinds of de- 
lightful horrors ; and this custom 
we kept up until we were — well, 
never mind how old I 

Occasionally the tall folding 
doors of the drawing-room opened, 
and in the entrance stood, solemnly 
gazing at us — though a twinkle 
lurked in his deep eyes — a well- 
known, loosely clad figure, pipe in 
hand. The boys sprang to meet 
their father, and lights and music 
were called for. Then what a 
banging and beating of the piano, 
what a shouting there would be ! 
Lionel was really musical, but 



OF TEI\]NYSON 35 

there was not much music to be 
got out of that ancient instrument. 
In one of the letters pubhshed in 
the life of my uncle-in-law, Sir 
George Grove, he writes of that 
piano thus : 

" Sullivan went down with me, 
and pleased both Mr. and Mrs. 
Tennyson extremely. In the even- 
ing we had as much music as we 
could on a very tinkling piano, very 
much out of tune." ^ 

This was the uncle whom Brown- 
ing, the poet, addressed as " Grove, 
the Orientalist, the Schubertian, 
the Literate in ordinary and ex- 
traordinary." ^ And besides all 
these things, and many more, this 
one of the most delightful of uncles 
and men was in these later days 

^ Graves' " Life of Sir George Grove." 



36 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

Director of the Royal College of 
Music, and his home was the 
rendezvous for long years of those 
famous in music principally, but 
also in literature and art ; and it 
is amusing to think of him sub- 
jected to the singular noises given 
out by that funny old Farringford 
piano — not to mention Arthur 
Sullivan, his bosom friend. 
"What shall I say of Grove?" 
writes Sullivan. "It would be 
painting the lily to try and describe 
his goodness and charm." 

Mr. Sullivan, as he was in those 
early days, was one of the con- 
stant guests at the dear old frame 
house at Lower Sydenham, and it 
was there that I first saw him — 
when "Uncle G.," or " G." as 
he was fondly styled by a large 



OF TENNYSON 87 

circle, was editor of Macmillan's 
Magazine, Secretary to the Crystal 
Palace, and practically the author 
of those analytical programmes 
which rendered the Palace Concerts 
world renowned. Grove claimed 
that he was not the ** inventor" of 
the analytical programme; but 
whether this was so or no, it is 
certain that for forty Crystal Palace 
seasons he wrote most of the analy- 
ses for the concerts, his great learn- 
ing and his untiring researches 
where music was concerned making 
this work a labor of combined love 
and art. It was Grove who accom- 
panied Dean Stanley on his trip to 
this country in 1878. Stanley was 
my brother's godfather and one of 
our father's dearest friends, and 
only our joint representations as to 



38 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

the roughness of existence in the 
then wilds of the Blue Ridge pre- 
vented the Dean from paying us a 
visit. As it was, '' Uncle G." came 
on alone to Virginia, and enjoyed 
himself vastly. 

As I remember Sullivan, the pub- 
lished portraits of the celebrated 
composer are admirable likenesses. 
But to return to Farringford. 

With music in its highest sense 
such evenings as I am describing 
had little to do. The hush and 
quiet which usually prevailed 
downstairs vanished as if by 
magic. Scottish songs and old 
English ballads made the lofty 
rooms ring again. The poet never 
failed to call for Auld Lang Syne 
as a wind-up, he himself standing 
and crossing hands with the rest, 



OF TENNYSON 89 



his deep voice chiming in ; for 
to sing Auld Lang Syne without 
standing and crossing hands is 
altogether wrong, and if you had 
ever sung it as I have many and 
many a time, with several hundred 
people, you would hate to sing it 
or listen to it sung in any other 
way. 

The poet's last call was for good- 
night kisses. Now this was a part 
of the performance I did not enjoy, 
because I so much disliked the odor 
of tobacco in his raggedy beard. 
My hair was very long and heavy, 
and he used to take hold of it by 
the extreme end, throw that end 
around his neck, and then turn 
and turn until he had wound him- 
self close enough to my face for 
what he called an "osculation." 



^o A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

Then followed the hunt in the 
boys' study for hats and wraps, 
many loud good-nights, and away 
into the darkness we scurried, 
father and mother close behind, all 
bound for home and bed. 



OF TENNYSON 



Chapter III 

IN spite of their quaint costume 
and their gentle household ways, 
the boys were no mollycoddles, 
the younger, as I have said, being 
particularly high-spirited, and 
daring also. Yet their chief play- 
mates when we were on the Island 
were my sister and myself — and 
after all, we were not such very 
poor imitations of boys, as we had 
little to do with girls in those 
days, and could do everything that 
boys could, even to playing cricket 
and football, and taking the kicks 
and hard knocks without a mur- 
mur. It is the fashion now for 
girls to do as boys do, but then it 
was not a fashion or a fad, but 
merely quite a common custom in 



42 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

England for girls to be athletic, 
and to ride, or even to run, across 
country as the boys and men did. 
No one talked or made a fuss about 
it, or put their pictures in the 
newspapers, or blew trumpets, or 
anything of that kind. If a girl 
ran several miles across rough 
country, or stuck to her saddle for 
a whole day where fences were 
stiff and water-jumps wide and 
deep, or leaped higher than the 
boys in the gymnasium, she just 
did it — and that was the begin- 
ning and end of the whole affair. 
Therefore it was, I suppose, that 
the Tennyson boys were able to 
make good companions of us, 
although we were girls. 

Hallam must have been quite 
thirteen years old when his father 




HALLAM 

Aged 12 



JSu Wails 



OF TENNYSON 43 

wrote to the late Duke of Argyle : 
"I have decided to send my son 
Hallam to Marlborough. For 
Bradley is a friend of mine, and 
Stanley has told me that it is the 
best school in England." Then, 
of course, the boy's flowing locks 
had to be shorn, and I well re- 
member the shocked awe with 
which we gazed upon our play- 
mate, his yellow mane gone, and 
attired like an everyday boy. 

The games we four loved best, 
however, were those of the imagi- 
nation, whether played indoors or 
out. In the outdoor games a son 
of Julia Margaret Cameron, the 
first artist-photographer, often 
joined us, and also our brother ; 
and when we were in the mood for 
riotous boy-games the Farringford 



44 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

meadows were trampled by the 
feet of many boys — sons of resi- 
dents for the most part, with 
occasional visitors ; for in those 
days there was no railroad to 
Freshwater, and the beauties of 
that beautiful spot were little 
known. Neither had Mr. Tenny- 
son — and others beside him — 
begun to bewail the ruin of their 
island corner by the intrusions of 
"bricks and mortar." One of the 
resident families contained but a 
single girl in the midst of a small 
crowd of boys, and this family 
sometimes came to play in the 
Farringford grounds, and my 
brother, my sister, and I often 
spent part of a day with them at 
their own home. And a charming 
home that Was. Several acres of 



OF TENNYSON 45 



land belonged to It, and when 
Lady Hammond wanted to call 
her flock to tea she used to blow 
a silver whistle which could be 
heard at a great distance. After 
tea, before going home, we al- 
ways spent an hour or so, clus- 
tered around her knee, listening 
breathlessly to awful stories of the 
Indian Mutiny, through which 
Lady Hammond and her husband, 
the Admiral, had safely passed, 
surviving perils and hardships un- 
speakable. But though the Ham- 
mond boys sometimes came to 
Farringford, I do not recall the 
Tennyson boys' presence at any of 
those gatherings at the Hammonds' 
home. 

But not even a child's picture of 
Freshwater, which leaves out so 



46 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

many celebrated grown-ups, would 
be complete without some mention 
of the old parish church ; and what 
brings me to this is the fact that 
the son of its apple-cheeked, kindly 
rector, Mr. Isaacson, was one of 
our playmates in our real boy 
games. I do not know how many 
years Mr. Isaacson filled this posi- 
tion, but it must have been for a 
great many, as I cannot imagine 
Freshwater without him. When 
I was a small child, I believed him 
to be a very old man, which shows 
how absurd children are some- 
times. In those days the pews 
were enormously high and the 
seats cramped and narrow, and we 
were shut into these boxes by tall 
doors. Unless our parents were 
kind enough to lift us on the seat, 



OF TENNYSON 4? 

we could see nothing; and Mr. 
Isaacson's sermons were very, very 
long. Almost the first thing I can 
remember is standing on that pew 
seat beside my father, and suddenly 
making a remark in a loud voice 
which caused the congregation to 
bow their heads in the shelter of 
their tall pews and my father to 
catch me up in his arms and hurry 
down the aisle with me into the 
open air. I was not taken to church 
again for some time, he has since 
informed me. But the remark I 
made, though out of place, was 
not unnatural. The pulpit had a 
canopy top, and was rather like 
the beds of the period, now coming 
into fashion again, and the rector 
wore a shining white surplice ; 
therefore I exclaimed: "Papa, 



48 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

why has Mr. Isaacson got on his 
nightgown and is going to bed in 
church? " 

Another curious feature of this 
old church was its music, which 
was provided by a barrel or grind 
organ, whose wheezy sounds came 
down to us from a bare gallery, 
in which the singers also were. 
Everybody who knew Freshwater 
knew this church, perched high on 
a hill, and surrounded by a grave- 
yard filled with tombstones, on 
many of which the quaintest in- 
scriptions were cut deep into the 
stone and overgrown with mosses. 
As I said. Freshwater church en- 
tered into the life of the children 
of whom I am writing. 

But to go back to our playtimes. 
Those games of the imagination 



OF TENNYSON 49 



played by us in Maiden's Croft 
were really best beloved of all. 

Maiden's Croft, well known to 
all the poet's friends, was part of 
the Farringford estate ; and though 
we often played the same games 
when Hallam and Lionel came to 
see us at our own home, the 
magic of the Croft was somehow 
missing. 



5o A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

Chapter III 

Maidens croft, through 

which runs the path from Farring- 
ford to the now famous Beacon 
Down, is a long, tree-bordered 
meadow. A lane — a real English 
lane, shut in by moss-grown, 
flower-strewn banks, as shown in 
the picture — divides the Croft 
from the lawns and groves sur- 
rounding the house. A rustic 
bridge crosses this roadway, and 
almost underneath the bridge is the 
little green postern-gate of which 
I spoke before. The Croft was 
constantly used by the poet as an 
outdoor study, and when he was 
there no one else was permitted to 
cross the bridge. Usually he paced 
the length of the meadow, back 



OF TENNYSON 



and forth, composing and meditat- 
ing, but sometimes he wrote in 
the picturesque summer-house he 
had had built halfway along the 
meadow. It was octagonal in 
shape, and was fitted with benches 
and a table, and, as his son tells, 
the poet had himself painted on its 
windows ' ' marvellous dragons and 
sea-serpents." 

The great man safely out of 
the way, with some chosen com- 
panion, on his daily walk to 
Beacon Down, stirring times some- 
times arrived for that summer- 
house, and this sacred building was 
transformed into a castle. Then 
sprang over the bridge little knights 
and squires of high degree, bearing 
lances of reed and shields of closely 
plaited rushes. Terrific were the 



52 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

onslaughts upon that castle, gallant 
its defence, and many a splendid 
horseman bit the dust. Or the 
greensward of Maiden's Croft be- 
came in imagination lists, whereon 
were held gorgeous jousts and 
tournaments, witnessed by high- 
born ladies, sumptuously arrayed. 
The sole cause of dispute arose 
from the vehement opposition of 
all concerned, the two girls in- 
cluded, to "play lady." The role 
was looked on as insignificant, not 
to say humiliating, and the matter 
invariably ended in ' ' making be- 
lieve." The gallant knights wore 
the imaginary tokens of imaginary 
fair ones, and raised reverently 
admiring eyes to sublime beings, 
who gazed down upon the lists 
from imaginary thrones, "Queens 



OF TENNYSON 53 

of Beauty" in our dreams alone. 
Thus all were satisfied. Yet even 
the degree of squire was viewed 
askance, particularly as each mem- 
ber of the party was of the opinion 
that a certain knight belonged to 
him or her and to no other. For 
instance, I was Sir Tristram, sleep- 
ing or waking, playing or studying 
my lessons ; no one dared to in- 
fringe on my rights. The same 
was true of my sister, who per- 
sonated another knight of equal 
renown, whilst Hallam was always 
Sir Launcelot and Lionel was Sir 
Galahad. The other players, not 
being regular in attendance, had 
to take what they could get. Thus 
it may be seen that we four, at 
least, had "The Idylls of the 
King" at our tongues' ends, and 



54 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

that, what with these and the im- 
mortal legends of King Arthur and 
his Knights of the Round Table, 
we were never at a loss for inspir- 
ing games. Neither was it only 
the Idylls that entered into our 
young lives. There were few of 
Tennyson's poems which we could 
not pour forth in moments of 
enthusiasm, and besides Tenny- 
son, Shelley, Keats, Swinburne, 
Wordsworth, and yet others fur- 
nished us with an unfailing supply 
of poetical nourishment. To this 
day the back of my mind is stored 
with these old favorites, ready at 
the slightest encouragement, and 
often without it, to issue forth. 
This habit, termed by our mother 
** spouting,'* is a trick inherited 
or caught from our father, from 



OF TENNYSON 55 

whose lips, as we galloped together 
morning after morning over the 
wide Wiltshire downs, rolled con- 
tinually the music of England's 
Immortals. Perhaps it is not such 
a bad trick, after all ; the tongue 
might be doing worse things. 
Until I was well in my teens — 
fully fifteen — I was not allowed 
to read any novels except certain 
ones of Walter Scott's, and not even 
those until the afternoon ; and as at 
that date there were few or no maga- 
zines for young people, there was 
plenty of room for the poetry and 
history, the love for which our father 
encouraged in preference to what 
he called "trash." 

I think an incident relating to 
the poet Dante Rossetti is not out 
of place here. A scholarly friend 



56 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

of that great man brought to our 
house the manuscript of Rossetti's 
exquisite poem, " The Blessed 
Damozel." Whether we merely 
heard our father read it several 
times, or whether we were per- 
mitted to read for ourselves the 
precious manuscript (although, of 
course, it may have been but a 
copy) , I cannot say ; certain it is 
that in a very short time the long 
poem was being reeled off by the 
yard in those haunts sacred to the 
young ones of the family. When 
the poem was published, changes 
were made of which we stoutly 
disapproved, and to which to this 
day I cannot reconcile myself! 

We went to the Isle of Wight only 
for a few weeks twice a year, and it 
was whilst we were absent that Gari- 



OF TENNYSON 67 

baldi paid his memorable visit to the 
Tennjsons. I remember with what 
delighted amusement we examined 
the funny caricatures of the family, 
intended for likenesses, published in 
the Illustrated London News. The 
picture represented Mr. and Mrs. 
Tennyson and the two boys re- 
ceiving the Italian hero under the 
portico in front of the house, 
where members of the royal fam- 
ily were always received by them. 
Every detail of the quaint costumes 
of the Tennysons was faithfully 
reproduced, but the faces were, 
or appeared to us, very comical. 
Many a laugh we had over them I 
And the first thing we ran to look 
at on our return to Freshwater was 
the tree planted in the Farringford 
garden by the great patriot. 



58 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

Chapter IV 

IVlANY of you have perhaps heard 
of the Tennyson Memorial Cross, 
set up on Beacon Down, the poet's 
favorite walk, and dedicated to his 
memory on August 6, 1897. Also 
you have no doubt read of that 
other memorial to the poet, in the 
far Arctic regions, — a tall pillar 
of rock discovered by Dr. Kane, 
the Arctic explorer, on his voyage 
in search of that other explorer, 
Sir John Franklin, who was Mrs. 
Tennyson's uncle. Dr. Kane, 
therefore, had two reasons for 
naming that beautiful pillar The 
Tennyson Monument, — *' your 
memorial of me in the wilder- 
ness," as the poet wrote him, — 
first, as being a warm admirer 



OF TENNYSON 69 

of Tennyson's poems; second, be- 
cause the poet's wife was the lost 
explorer's niece. A picture of the 
Arctic Tennyson Memorial hung 
over the fireplace in the anteroom 
at Farringford. 

But that memorial we have 
never seen, nor ever shall see. It 
is the Memorial Cross on Beacon 
Down in the Isle of Wight which 
marks a spot both near and dear ; 
for on that spot once stood the 
old Beacon, full of interest for the 
children of the long ago, apart 
from the fact that it was the goal 
of the poet's everyday walk. 

The old beacon was a pole set 
in a pile of rocks, and in time of 
*' war's alarms" a heap of brush 
lay always beside it ready for 
hasty kindling, and the iron basket 



6o A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

upon its top was kept filled with 
tar for the same purpose ; but 
that, of course, was long before 
we children were born. Still, we 
loved to hear our elders tell of 
the warning fires leaping into the 
blackness of the night from the 
white and crimson cliiTs of Eng- 
land's furrowed coast, summoning 
the sturdy yeomen from their beds 
and the soldiers from their camps 
to drive away an invader who, after 
all, never arrived. The Beacon 
stood where the Cross stands now, 
at the extreme limit of the Down, 
overlooking the surge and roar of 
the sea and the sharp white points 
of the Needles. 

Many happy minutes have I 
passed lying face downward upon 
the short grass and wild thyme 



OF TENNYSON 6i 

and tiny shells of Beacon Down, 
gazing, fascinated, over the edge 
of that terrific descent into the 
boiling caldron below, whilst my 
patient father held me by the 
skirts, lest I should fall over and 
be dashed to pieces on the rocks. 
Yet the scene had no terrors for 
me; it was pure, unmixed delight. 
It was no wonder that the poet loved 
this scene and view so well that 
he went there every day. Across 
the sapphire blue of the Solent 
stretched the fair Hampshire shore, 
protected by Hurst Castle on its 
long spit of sand ; and between 
the Castle and the Needles slipped, 
hour by hour, ships great and 
small into the unknown deep or 
homeward bound from distant lands ; 
bearing with them sometimes the 



62 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

vague dreams and imaginings of a 
still untravelled little girl. 

Quite as entrancing was it to 
look down the sheer wall of the 
cliff into the abyss below. The 
furious roar of the waves as they 
dashed the foam high above the 
Needles and into my own small 
face peeping over the cliff's brim, 
the scream of the gray gulls as they 
wheeled and poised in the heart 
of the tumult, — all is as vivid as 
if seen and heard at this moment ; 
and the wail of the ocean birds on 
the monotonous New Jersey flats 
speaks to one listener always of 
enchanted times in the long ago 
when she lay face downward on 
a little island's perilous rim, and 
nothing in the world was real but 
dreams. 



OF TENNYSON 63 

And equally vivid is the picture 
of the well-known figure pacing 
the long meadow of Maiden's Croft 
and climbing the high down, — 
the picture of a majestic Spanish 
brigand in flapping sombrero and 
cloak wrapped in statuesque folds 
about him. Never did he walk 
alone, and many great and good 
Englishmen as well as Americans 
have paced beside him up on 
Beacon Down. But to me, as 
a child, the picture of my own 
father's small and active form 
beside that of the more slowly 
moving poet is the one that left a 
stronger impression. 

Like most persons possessed of 
what is called the artistic or poetic 
temperament, Mr. Tennyson was 
given to fits of gloom. He spoke 



64 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

of these spells as being due to 
*'the black-bloodedness of the 
Tennysons," but every one knows 
that other families beside that of 
the Tennysons are afflicted with 
such an inheritance. My father 
used to tell a story about these 
gloomy spells, which, like others 
of their kind, seldom had any 
cause. One summer day he ar- 
rived at his Freshwater home in 
high spirits, and almost immedi- 
ately rushed off to Farringford to 
see his poet friend. Not finding 
him in or around the house, he 
hurried to Maiden's Croft, where 
he found Mr. Tennyson sitting 
alone on a bench. My father 
smote him impetuously on the 
shoulder, calling out, *' Hullo! 
how are you ? ' The poet answered 



OF TENNYSON 65 

in a deep voice, and without even 
turning his head, ' ' Tired of Hfc ! " 
At this time, as it happened, Mr. 
Tennyson was particularly prosper- 
ous and fortunate in every way. 

While the boys were still young 
Mrs. Tennyson's airings were taken 
in a wheeled chair, drawn by one 
of the fattest of white ponies, who 
bore the distinguished name of 
*' Fanny.'* This otherwise inno- 
cent beast was the cause — just 
once, never again — of bitter mor- 
tification to me. For some reason 
that I do not recall she was sent 
over for me to ride one day, and 
I had hardly proceeded a quarter 
of a mile before the saddle quietly 
described a half-circle and I was 
deposited in one of the ditches 
that always ran on either side of a 



60 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

Freshwater lane. I was furious. 
Never had such a thing happened 
to me before. To think that I 
should be thrown — and by fat 
Fanny, too ! That this humiliating 
accident took place just because 
Fanny loas so fat was my sole 
consolation. 

When Fanny drew the chair, 
Mr. Tennyson or the boys usually 
walked beside it. There was a 
farm belonging to Farringford, and 
also a large walled-in garden, — 
rich in summertime with luscious 
fruit, — so that Fanny could so- 
berly walk for quite a distance 
without leaving the estate. In 
those days Mrs. Tennyson led a 
life of almost entire seclusion so 
far as outside visiting went. When 
Hallam was old enough to drive 



OF TENNYSON 67 

a pair of horses, the chair was ex- 
changed for a carriage, and every 
fine day he drove his father or 
mother or both. The devotion of 
the boys to their parents w^as some- 
thing for even children to observe 
and remember. No daughter could 
have done more for a mother 
than Hallam did ; not all daugh- 
ters would have done as much. 
Although a housekeeper was 
employed, this son, at a very 
early age, oversaw the household 
arrangements ; and the outside 
world knows how, as he grew 
to manhood and after he became 
a man, he was his father's right 
hand and his mother's loving aide 
and companion. It was he of 
whom the poet wrote to Mr. Glad- 
stone : 



68 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

* * I do not think any man ever 
had a better son than I have in 
him." 

But we are now talking of child- 
hood's days. Of that united family 
of four, only one now remains. 
We used, as children, to believe 
that the younger boy possessed a 
touch of his father's genius; and 
children are sometimes pretty good 
judges. But you have all read of 
Pegasus, the winged horse, who 
never bore harness, and perhaps 
Lionel's genius resembled Pegasus. 
It is hard to say, for Lionel died 
long before he reached his prime. 
He had a slight impediment in his 
speech, and as a boy he was given 
to spells of dreaminess alternating 
with exuberant spirits. But he had 
a fine sense of humor, and was, as 



OF TENINYSON 



I said, musically gifted. After his 
marriage, when he Hved in London, 
he used this gift for the pleasure 
and benefit of the working people, 
and did some literary work besides. 
But his actual work was in the 
India Office, and it was during his 
return from a trip to India with 
Lord Dufferin that he died of 
jungle fever, and was buried in 
the Red Sea. He was only thirty- 
two years old, and, as his father 
said, "so full of promise." 

Both boys were alike in their 
care and thought for their delicate 
mother's health. The hasty young 
feet fell light and slow on the thick 
carpets before the drawing-room 
door was reached, the handle was 
turned ever so softly, and the jubi- 
lant voices hushed. Neither did 



70 A CHILD'S REGOLLEGTIOINS 

their unselfishness and considera- 
tion make them unhappy. I have 
never known a happier boyhood 
than that of those boys. Quarrels 
and discontent found no place at 
Farringford; on the contrary, all 
was ** sweetness and light.'* And 
this is no late idealization; we 
children knew it at the time, and 
have never forgotten it. 



OF TENNYSON 71 

Chapter V 

And now I think wc have come 
to a point where we must not go 
any further before giving a chapter 
to Mrs. Cameron, without whom 
no picture of Farringford would be 
complete. Julia Margaret Cameron 
was an artist, not a mere * ' camera 
fiend.'* Not only so, but she was 
the one living photographer at that 
date who attempted the artistic ; 
therefore she was not appreciated 
as she deserved to be: She was 
very intimate with the Tennysons, 
her picturesque if somewhat untidy 
home being not very far away, 
and that home, as she describes it 
herself, often the scene of * ' feasts 
of intellect.'* Mr. Cameron him- 
self was a learned and interesting 



72 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

man, but to the children of those 
days a rather mysterious and awe- 
inspiring being, with his long white 
beard and hair and Oriental garb, 
— for the Gamerons had lived many 
years in India. There were sev- 
eral sons, but only one near our 
own age. He had a passion for 
the stage, and would have made a 
success of his chosen profession, I 
have been told, had it not been for 
a defect in his eyes which finally 
compelled him to abandon an 
actor's life. 

Mrs. Cameron was neither mys- 
terious nor awe-inspiring, but just 
a kind, exacting, though benevo- 
lent, tyrant. Children loved but 
fled from her. I can see her now, 
clad in the never-failing wrapper, 
stained — as were her hands and 



OF TENMYSON 7^ 

eager face — with the chemicals she 
used ill her work, her hair faUing 
any way but the right way, lying 
in wait some fine morning at her 
garden-gate for the young ones 
passing down the road on their 
way to Farringford or to the sands 
of Freshwater Bay. 

"She's coming! She'll catch 
one of us ! " 

And sure enough an arm would 
intercept the passage of some luck- 
less wight, and, bribed by jars of 
preserve or other toothsome dainty, 
the victim was led away to spend 
the sunny hours posing in the 
studio. Photography was then, at 
the best, a slow and tiresome 
process, and Mrs. Cameron never 
hurried in her work. Endless were 
the poses, especially if, as was often 



74 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

the case, the chosen victim was to 
represent some character in poem 
or story. Mrs. Cameron did not, 
as a rule, care for mere beauty — 
she wanted an artistic subject; 
nevertheless, two pretty cousins of 
ours visiting us at Freshwater were 
favorite victims. Lionel Tennyson 
was, perhaps, her star performer, 
however, among the children ; and 
indeed he was artistic enough to 
satisfy anyone. But none escaped 
his or her turn. At that time she 
was specially fond of illustrating 
Mr. Tennyson's poems by means 
of captured children, and "Enoch 
Arden " had its full share of attention 
— and of victims I She tried two 
or three assortments before she was 
satisfied, and if my memory serves 
me right, her final choice fell on 



OF TENNYSON 75 

my two cousins and Hallann Tenny- 
son. 

Ilcr particular favorite for a long 
time was a servant girl, who to the 
ordinary eye was no beauty, but who 
became the artist's idol. She cer- 
tainly posed beautifully, and when 
Mrs. Cameron began to exhibit her 
pictures in London, as she did later 
on, some of her finest photographs 
were pictures of this girl, of whom 
she made a pet. 

Of course Mr. Tennyson had to 
pose constantly for her, but he never 
yielded without a struggle. He 
used to meet her prayers and coax- 
ings with jeers and fun, and laugh 
at her enthusiasm, but she usually 
won the victory, as many a splendid 
portrait of him proves. The 
picture she took of the poet in 



76 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

1867 i^ more lifelike to me than 
any other. Undoubtedly Mrs. 
Cameron was a genius in her own 
way. But she certainly was a 
strange looking figure, and it was 
no wonder that, as Mrs. Tennyson 
tells in her diary, Garibaldi thought 
she was a beggar when she kneeled 
before him, her stained hands up- 
raised, begging to be allowed to 
take his picture. 

She had another passion also, 
though probably she indulged this 
passion for the stage as much to 
please her youngest son — her Ben- 
jamin — as herself. She built a 
small theatre adjoining the house, 
and there for a good many years 
she was in the habit of staging 
well-known plays, the performers 
being her amateur young friends. 



OF TENNYSON 77 

The last year before my part of the 
story was ended by my coming out 
to this country to join my brother, 
we spent a few of the winter weeks 
at Freshwater in a house belonging 
to Mr. Tennyson — we having long 
outgrown our own home on the 
island — and were at once pressed 
into service by Mrs. Cameron, who 
wanted to present a play in the 
interests of charity. I do not feel 
sure of the play itself, but think it 
was one popular at that date, ' ' Our 
Wife," the heroine being repre- 
sented by my luckless self. I say 
luckless, because Mrs. Cameron was 
as severely exacting in this direction 
as she was in her photography. 
Her troupe consisted of my sister 
and myself, Hallam and Lionel, 
and her own son Henry. Her 



78 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

excitement and enthusiasm were 
greater than can be described, the 
audience was expected to be large, 
and the tickets were sold rapidly. 
Her studio was deserted for her 
parlor, in which daily rehearsals 
took place. Now the play was a 
sentimental one, chosen by herself, 
and there was consequently some 
rebelHon on the part of the per- 
formers during these rehearsals. 
Girls and boys who had been play- 
mates from childhood objected to 
standing up in the light of day in 
a commonplace parlor, in their 
everyday clothes, and making 
violent love to order — in cold blood 
too, without paint and powder, or 
footlights or applause. However, 
our kind tyrant would have it so, 
though the mischievous Lionel 



OF TENNYSON 79 

*'took it out" not only at the re- 
hearsals, but, sad to say, during 
the public performance of the 
play by turning his back now and 
again on the audience and twisting 
his face into horrible grimaces for 
the encouragement of the fellow- 
sufferer who chanced at the mo- 
ment to be "speaking" his or her 
" piece." 

During some of the rehearsals 
Mrs. Cameron became very much 
displeased with the backwardness 
of her troupe in the Ipve-scenes. 
One day in particular she leaped to 
her feet and almost knocked our 
heads together. 

"Oh, heavens, Henry!" she 
cried. "Do you call that making 
love ? Here — let me show you 
how to do it! " 



8o A CHILD'S REGOLLEGTIONS 

Then seizing the reluctant hand 
of the unfortunate heroine of the 
romance, she flung herself upon 
her knees and poured forth a flood 
of impassioned words, winding up 
with an embrace which certainly 
was not at all like those we see 
on the stage, because it was the 
real thing. 

"There!" she exclaimed, rising 
out of breath and triumphant. 
" That's the way to do it 1 " 

"All right, mother!" replied 
her son, a comical gleam in his 
eye. ' ' All in good time ! " 

She scolded and wrangled in her 
own good-natured way to the very 
last, and it was not until the falling 
of the curtain on the eventful night 
that her beaming face and her rap- 
turous embraces of each member of 



OF TENNYSON 



her troupe bore eloquent witness to 
her final satisfaction. 

And now we will go back to the 
children. 



82 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

Chapter YI 

After Hallam was sent to Marl- 
borough College, of which our 
father was head master, the Tenny- 
sons visited us more than once. 
The climate was rather severe, and 
was considered too much so for 
Lionel, particularly as the boys — 
all boarders, and between four and 
five hundred in number — made it 
a point of honor to harden them- 
selves ; that is to say, go without 
overcoats in the bitterest winter 
weather. But it was a great school 
— considered then the best in Eng- 
land ; according to Matthew Arnold 
considered so "by universal con- 
sent." Lionel went later to Eton. 
The principal building of Marl- 
borough College was, and is, a 



OF TENNYSON 83 

beautiful old red brick Elizabethan 
mansion, which after it passed out 
of its noble owner's possession was 
used as an inn in the days of stage 
coaches. When we first went to 
Marlborough one coach still passed 
through the broad street of the town, 
though the old inn had long been 
turned into a school. The town 
itself is to this day one of the most 
picturesque in England, with its 
ancient houses, — pent-houses, as 
they are called, — whose upper 
stories project so far over the lower 
ones that persons can walk half the 
length of the street on a rainy day 
without getting wet. The street is 
not only long, but immensely wide 
— in fact, one great market-place. 
There is nothing like it anywliere 
that I have seen. Mr. Tennyson 



84 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

is reported as quoting the saying 
that ' ' If God made the country and 
man the town, the devil made the 
country town!" Nevertheless, he 
admired the tow^n of Marlhorough 
very much. 

The tall tower of one of the parish 
churches divides the street at its 
end, and in the bend of the road 
— the great coach road to Bath — 
stands the college, with its different 
buildings, and the master's house — 
our house, as it once was. Splen- 
did lime trees rear their tall heads 
about the older buildings, and in 
front of the Elizabethan mansion 
spreads the old garden, just as it 
used to be in ancient days, with its 
velvet bowling-green and wide ter- 
race and fantastically cut yews, and 
tall limes whispering in a circle as 



OF TENNYSON 85 

the breeze from the Wiltshire downs 
tosses their leaves. Could a better 
place be found for the romantic 
games in which we delighted? A 
venerable w^all separated the college 
garden from that of the master, but 
all alike were beautiful. On one 
of his visits the poet was inspired 
by the enchantments of these gardens 
to write a poem there ; at which we 
did not wonder in the least. 

A visit from the poet laureate 
was, of course, a great event at 
Marlborough. Everyone desired to 
meet him, but only a few could be 
chosen. His visits were never long, 
and nobody must be invited to the 
house who could by any possibility 
bore him. My parents had to set 
their wits to work for some time 
before his arrival. The schoolboys 



86 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

were never overlooked, and the sixth 
form — the highest class in the 
college — vN^ere invited as a w^hole 
to hear him read his own poems. 
A great deal of praise has been be- 
stov\^ed upon these readings, but I 
have to speak of them as we young 
ones found them, and I am sorry 
to say they seemed to us rather 
uncomfortable performances. We 
were accustomed to the musical 
cadences of our father's voice, whose 
reading not only of poetry, but of 
the Bible's grand prose was unique, 
and when the poet read I really 
must confess that we thought he was 
shy, as we heard little but mutter- 
ings and grumblings into his 
straggly beard. While we are quite 
young, you know, we do not think 
just like everyone else, but we have 



OF TENNYSON 87 



' ' long, long thoughts " of our own. 
And we were young. '*We" 
meant at that time my sister, my- 
self, and a girl cousin who lived with 
us. Of this cousin I must tell a 
funny little tale, which she has since 
often laughed at herself. After the 
carriage had rolled from the door 
one morning, bearing the departing 
poet, our cousin ran to us in the 
schoolroom in great glee, carrying 
something carefully in her hand. 
For some time she would not let 
us look at her treasure, or tell us 
what it was. Finally she opened 
her closed fist very cautiously, and 
we peeped in . What do you think 
she had ? A bunch of hair comb- 
ings ! "What are those?" we 
exclaimed with fine scorn. "They 
are Mr. Tennyson's hairs!" she 



88 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

cried with a mixture of defiance 
and triumph. ' ' I combed them out 
of his brush ! " But I am ashamed 
to say that we continued to poke 
fun at her. 

There were certain rooms at 
Marlborough dedicated to the poet's 
use, and my mother kept his special 
coffee cup and saucer under a glass 
case, so that no one else should drink 
out of them . 

We were excessively proud and 
fond of Marlborough and everything 
connected with it, and that the poet 
was also quite enthusiastic pleased us 
very much. Besides the wide chalk 
downs, there was a most beautiful 
forest — Savernake Forest — belong- 
ing to the Marquis of Ailesbury, but 
open to all. In it were broad, 
grassy glades and magnificent 



OF TENNYSON 89 

timber, and one specially fine avenue 
shadowed for two or three miles 
and more by high, oyer-arching 
trees. There were troops of fallow 
deer in the forest, and altogether it 
is one of the loveliest and most 
attractive estates in England, and 
to us, in our youth, quite perfect. 

Neither were the forest and the 
downs all there was to show the 
visiting poet . The dr uidical remains 
of Stonehenge were within a long 
drive, but much nearer — indeed all 
around — were monuments of rock 
raised by unknown hands, some- 
times valleys full of such, relics 
of ancient British villages, huge 
mounds which were the last resting- 
places of long-forgotten warriors, 
and many, many things of interest 
to the historian and antiquarian. 



go A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

They were interesting to us too, so 
we found it not at all surprising 
that Mr. Tennyson enjoyed his 
Marlborough drives. Dearly did 
we love that home, and it was a sad 
day for us when our father became 
master of University College, and 
we had to move to Oxford, Arch- 
deacon Farrar taking his place. I 
was at school in Germany at the 
time, and I well remember how 
grieved I was to hear that Marl- 
borough was to be our home no 
more. 

Our respective fathers were very 
much interested in language, the 
study of words, their derivation, 
and so forth. Amongst my father's 
many scholarly friends were men 
of note in this particular line. I 
remember well an argument which 



OF TENNYSON 



took place on the lawn at Marl- 
borough between Hallam on one 
side and my sister and myself on 
the other, Hallam and I being 
perhaps thirteen years old at the 
time. We contended for the broad 
A, because our father rightly insisted 
that the narrow A was a Cockneyism, 
pure and simple, and did not belong 
to the language. Our mother used 
the narrow A, and Hallam vainly 
endeavored to twist our mouths 
to something betwixt and between, 
which he claimed on his father's 
behalf. We laughingly refused, 
however, to accept the compromise, 
which probably was a satisfactory 
one, nevertheless. 

In Tennyson's Life by his son 
is mentioned the incident of our 
Belgian governess placidly replying, 



92 A CHILD'S REGOLLECTIOWS 

when the poet asked her how much 
of his reading of ' ' The Northern 
Farmer" she had understood, 
"Pas un mot, Monsieur." "Not 
one word." We were fond of our 
governess, who still remains a 
friend of the family ; but I remem- 
ber that we were very much amused 
by her calm, undisturbed reply, and 
also wondered how much of his 
careful explanations she understood. 
Probably " pas un mot" either ! 

The organist of the college chapel, 
who also trained and managed the 
large, fine choir of schoolboys, was 
a more than ordinarily good 
musician. We three girls received 
lessons from him, and were the 
most loyal admirers of his playing 
on both organ and piano, not to 
mention his compositions. To this 



OF TENNYSON 98 

day Mr. Bambridge's rendering of 
The Dead March in " Saul" on the 
chapel organ, on one of those sad 
occasions of the deaths of boys, is 
an impressive memory with me. 
Such occasions fortunately did not 
occur often, but when they did, it 
is difficult to imagine anything more 
solemn and pathetic than this as- 
sembling of the whole great school, 
masters included, to mourn the 
going out of some young life. And 
when the music chanced to be a 
favorite, the entire congregation 
would throw themselves into it, 
heart and soul, the volume of har- 
mony, whether sad or triumphant, 
rising hi^fh over the strains of the 
powerful organ. No one who has 
ever formed part of such scenes can 
ever forget them. Heart and soul 



94 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

were indeed stirred to their depths. 
When the whole school rose to sing, 
to Mr. Bamhridge's beautiful and 
unforgetable music, the hymn, 

" Thou art gone to the grave, but we 
will not deplore thee, 
Though sorrows and darkness en- 
compass the tomb, 
Thy Saviour hath passed through its 
portals before thee, 
And the lamp of His love is thy 
guide through the gloom," 

it was not singular that many young 
voices were choked and many young 
eyes dim. It was this exquisite 
composition that moved Mr. Tenny- 
son to admiration, although he 
never heard it sung, as we did, by 
hundreds of voices at the death of a 
schoolmate. Marlburians are scat- 
tered all over the face of the earth, 



OF TENNYSON 95 



a goodly proportion of them have 
mounted to * ' the seats of the 
mighty, " many have passed in their 
turn through the grave's portals, 
but I doubt if any Kving son of 
their beloved Alma Mater could 
listen unmoved to these familiar 
strains. 



96 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

Chapter VII 

JdUT children grow up in spite of 
everybody and everything, and we 
did as the others do. I was almost 
ready for long dresses and tucked- 
up hair when my father sadly tore 
himself away from beloved Marl- 
borough to go to Oxford. I do not 
believe anything but the knowledge 
that his delicate health was unequal 
longer to the strain of that big and 
important school would have in- 
duced him to leave Marlborough, 
for he had already in the past de- 
clined other and greater honors. 
But the Wiltshire climate was harsh 
and the responsibility tremendous ; 
so, even as he himself had taken 
the place of one friend — my god- 
father. Bishop Cotton, of Calcutta 



OF TENNYSON 



97 



— SO he made way for another 
friend, Dr. Farrar. 

Our last visit to Freshwater paid 
as a family was, as I have told, 
spent in a house belonging to Mr. 
Tennyson close to Freshwater Bay. 
Our home was then at Oxford. 
The happy days of bringing ponies 
were over, but the boys contrived to 
find us something to ride occasion- 
ally, and on one of these occasions 
a rather curious incident occurred. 
Whilst we four were galloping over 
the downs and through the lanes, 
my mother had been spending the 
afternoon with Mrs. Tennyson, and 
suddenly springing from her chair 
she ran out bareheaded, exclaiming 
that she had just seen Hallam and 
myself racing our horses across 
the lawn past the drawing-room 



98 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

windows. We Avere miles away at 
the time, and in any case should 
not have used the beautiful mossy 
lawn for a race-course, so the matter 
was left unexplained ; its rather dis- 
agreeable though only result being 
that our mother, who had never been 
nervous about us before, was for 
some time afterward uneasy when 
we were out riding with the boys, as 
she could not help fearing that what 
she had seen, or believed she had 
seen, meant that some accident was 
going to happen to either Hallam 
or myself. But her fears were 
unfounded. 

Both Mr. Tennyson and Hallam 
were fond of making personal re- 
marks, to which both my sister and 
myself strongly objected. When 
Hallam thus sinned, we had no 



OF TENNYSON 



99 



hesitation in voicing our objections 
as loudly as we so desired; but with 
his father it was otherwise. One 
day at this time we were driving 
with the two in an open carriage, 
my sister and I facing them. 
Hallam started the trouble by fixing 
his eyes calmly and coolly on our 
faces, first one and then the other, 
for several minutes. We silently 
remonstrated, but in vain. We 
knew his ways too well. Losing 
patience, one of us ejaculated, 

*'What are you staring at, 
Hallam?" 

With the same coolness as before, 
he turned away, and addressing his 
father, as if we were wax figures at 
Madame Tussaud's, said, 

*' Father, Avould you call Edith 
and Daisy fair or dark ? " 

-Of a 



loo A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

A long and awful pause. Mr. 
Tennyson drew forth his glasses, 
carefully wiped them and placed 
them on his nose, with as much 
deliberation as though he were 
going to inspect a picture he had 
never seen before, although the one 
before him had been familiar for a 
great many years. His extraor- 
dinarily piercing, deep-set eyes 
transfixed us in turn. Finally he 
thrust out his lips and pronounced 
judgment in the profoundest tones 
of his bass-drum voice : 

' ' / should call them half-way 
houses I " 

Then those eyes twinkled, and 
half-way houses we were for a long 
time to come. 

Another incident which at the 
time did not seem amusing to us, 




TENNYSON AT I ARRINGFOHD 

About 1870 



OF TENISYSON 



but which later we understood better , 
belongs to that year. 

When I was about thirteen or 
fourteen, my sister and I were fired 
with the desire to edit a magazine. 
Very early in our editorial career 
we received the support and en- 
couragement of our father's brilliant 
young step-brothers, the younger 
of whom was not only near my 
own age , but a w arm and close friend . 
In its early days this magazine was 
brought out quarterly, and every 
word of it was copied by my own 
hand. Our list of contributors as 
well as subscribers was even then 
quite large, and after we moved to 
Oxford we found ourselves able to 
have the magazine printed . Oh , the 
pride and joy with which we gloated 
over those first printed pages I At the 



I02 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

time of which I am writing, * ' The 
Miscellany" had several noted 
names on its list — noted then or 
since. Unfortunately the magazine 
died a natural death after I came 
to this country, and but few 
copies remain of the long-lived 
"Miscellany"; but we had one 
hundred and twenty subscribers 
in the Oxford days, and such men 
wrote for us as Andrew Lang, 
WilHam Hurrell Mallock, A. T. 
Myers, Hallam and Lionel Tenny- 
son, and others since known to 
fame. Needless to say, all these 
wrote "for glory!" Perhaps I 
should also mention among the 
'authors my two uncles, whom the 
scholarly element in England recog- 
nizes amongst its honored sons, and 
my own sister. 



OF TENISYSON 



In that last Isle of Wight so- 
journ we were at the lieiglit of our 
amhitions, and one of these was to 
persuade Mr. Tennyson to give us 
four lines for the title-page of our 
coming January nuniher. But 
neither my sister nor myself could 
screw up our courage to the sticking- 
point. At last, repeatedly urged 
by Hallam, I found courage and 
opportunity on one of the Auld 
Lang Syne evenings I have already 
described . Probably something had 
occurred to annoy the poet, or his 
reasons were better than they seemed 
to us at the time, the children of 
his old friend ; but at all events 
he replied by asking me how much 
money I supposed every word of 
his to be worth? Perhaps he was 
joking, but we were well accus- 



io4 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

tomed, in our own family circle, 
to jests. However, we and our 
ambitions were successfully 
quenched. 

That winter Eleanor Locker, 
whom Lionel afterward married, 
was visiting at Farringford. He 
was married the year after my own 
marriage took place ; then came that 
of my sister; and, after an interval 
of a good many years, that of 
Hallam. 

Both the boys went to Cambridge, 
and more than one plan was formed 
for us to go and see them there; 
but their festive times occurred 
during our Oxford ' ' Commemora- 
tion" — or, as we call it here, 
* ' Commencement" — and then our 
duties as daughters of the head of 
a college prevented us from leaving 




LIONEL 

AS A CAMBRIDGE UNDERGRADUATE 



OF TEJNi^YSON io5 

home. But they came to see us 
at Oxford. 

My own recollections of Aid- 
worth, the poet's home on far- 
famed Blackdown in Surrey, take 
in but one visit, as not very long 
afterward my brother and his wife 
carried me off with them to Virginia, 
where within a year I was settled 
in my own home in the beautiful 
Blue Ridge country. 

Aldworth, as it then impressed 
me on my first and last acquain- 
tance with it, belongs to those 
"stately homes of England," of 
which, I think, it is Mrs. Hemans 
who sings. No doubt, however, 
you have seen pictures of the fine 
stone house standing high on the 
ridge of Blackdown. From its 
balustraded terrace the eye ranges 



io6 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

over hills and woods and rivers until 
it rests upon the blue ribbon of 
the English Channel, and around 
and about the house are the lawns 
and flowers and woods in which 
both Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson so 
much delighted. But somehow 
the witchery, the vague promise 
of romance, which enchained our 
youthful hearts and imaginations at 
Farringford, are absent. Yet Aid- 
worth is a noble home, worthy of 
a great poet. 

It is at Aldworth that the picture 
of the boys, painted by Watts, 
hangs. It represents them in their 
days of long hair, tunics, and wide 
collars ; and though we young ones 
never thought the likeness of Hallam 
good, that of Lionel seemed to us 
remarkably so, as it brings out not 




LIONEL 

Aged 10 



By Watts 



OF TEISISYSON 107 

only the beauty of the child face, 
but its hidden poetry too. 

During those few days at Aid- 
worth we took up again our 
childhood's ways. There, as at 
Farringford, was an anteroom, to 
which, after a reasonable time spent 
with our elders after dinner, we 
retired, enticed out by Lionel, 
who was always primed for fun, 
and followed later by Hallam. 
There, as in the old days, we 
crowded around the dying open 
fire and told tales of haunted 
houses and other creepy horrors, 
in the spinning of which yarns 
Lionel was especially proficient. 

There were certain *' sacred" 
hours during the day in which the 
poet, as befits a poet, liked to com- 
mune with his own soul and that 



io8 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

of no one else. Yet he did riot 
always care to be alone In these 
hours. As my sister writes : 

' ' Do you remember his morning 
walks at Aldworth, on which he 
liked to have company, but liked it 
to walk behind and not speak to 
him? So it did. Two or three 
of us following in single file over 
the heather. It was quite nice." 

Certainly I remember. The 
figure and the cloak — and the 
silence, in which alone high thoughts 
are set to noble words. 

At other times we either drove, 
all of us, in two carriages through 
that lovely country, or when Hallam, 
most devoted of sons, felt that 
he could be spared from attendance 
on his parents, one or both, we 
four young ones mounted horses, 



OF TENNYSON 109 

and with lunches attached to our 
saddles, raced away, to be gone for 
hours. As there chanced to be no 
other guests but our parents and 
ourselves, Ilallam, who was the 
mainstay of the household, was 
more than usually at leisure. 

One day in particular I recall. 
This elder son had made all arrange- 
ments for the comfort of the 
family during the few hours he 
expected to be absent, and all 
four of us were in the dining- 
room, chattering and having a 
good time, whilst we cut bread 
and meat for sandwiches. No 
doubt we were making a noise 
too, for Lionel was in riotous 
spirits, and as usual the wit of the 
company. At all events, although 
the windows were wide open, we 



no A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

did not hear the well-known massive 
tread on the gravelled terrace with- 
out, or notice the darkening of one 
of the windows by the large, cloaked 
form. Then we were startled by 
that deep-toned voice : 

" Hallam, I wish you would stay 
at home to-day. I need you." 

There was an instant's pause — 
scarcely more — on the part of one 
of the best sons in the world, and 
then came the cheerful, unhesitating 
reply. 

*'Very well, father. I will be 
with you directly." 

And we three rode away without 
Hallam. Thus it was always. And 
it is no exaggeration to say that in 
this absolute devotion he found 
great happiness; also, no doubt, 
his reward, if one were needed. 




TENNYSON AND HIS NURSE 



OF TENNYSON 



After I came to this country our 
father was appointed Dean of West- 
minster, to succeed his almost 
lifelong friend, Arthur Penrhyn 
Stanley. Mr. Tennyson paid more 
than one visit to the deanery — 
how many I do not know, as I 
never was in England but once 
when he was at our house. It was 
on this occasion that he took his 
seat in the House of Lords for the 
first time. He enjoyed wandering 
around the abbey and cloisters, and 
took much interest in the theatre, 
especially after his own plays had 
been put upon the stage. 

To the deanery many persons of 
note were invited to meet him, some 
of these as great, each in his own 
way, as the poet laureate himself, 
and it was 'at a luncheon party 



112 A CHILD'S RECOLLECTIONS 

given in his honor on the day he 
received his peerage that a rather 
amusing incident took place. The 
deanery servants were apparently 
greatly impressed with the fact that 
Mr. Tennyson was now a peer, and 
the butler in particular so far parted 
with his customary composure as 
to address Browning as ' ' my lord." 
The genial gentleman threw up his 
hands in disgust. *' Don't' my lord' 
me, my good man, I pray!" he 
cried, considerably to the amuse- 
ment of one of my sisters who sat 
next him at table, and who, like 
all who knew him, admired Mr. 
Browning extremely. 

And this was the last time I saw 
England's poet laureate. 



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